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ok shoot me down since I am a newbe at this , but why couldnt you take potatoes and run them raw through a semi comercial apple shredder and press the potatoe juice out of the pulp and heat it up say 150 F to break down the emzines. cool it add sugar to get what ever SG you want then pitch it ? save all the mess of makeing mash potatoes and straning it out before running it ? any though on this hair brain Idea ?..........wfw

you will have starch water..you need enzymes to brake the starch into sugar..

There also isn't enough water content in potatoes to press them like apples or grapes...

Ok , you both shot me down ............. lame idea

wfw52 wrote:Ok , you both shot me down ............. lame idea

No, I don't think they really shot you down, just pointed out flaws in the process as you described it. And it's not a lame idea at all.

Check out HD's section entitled "Using Potatoes".

why go thru the hassle of conversion if you're fortifying with sugar?

astronomical wrote:why go thru the hassle of conversion if you're fortifying with sugar?

I think we covered that with the whole pressing the potato juice out of the potatoes thing... The OP needs to research how to use potatoes properly, which has been covered in other topics and not worthy of repeating here...

"Ok , you both shot me down ............. lame idea "
its not really lame ,but needs to be done right.adding things like potatoes/wheat/ others ,can alter the outcome of product.

Wfw52

You posted in the right forum - novice distillers


I would suggest some directed searches here on HD check out the HD Google search button in the header

I'd search the following:

Diastatic malt. - this will give plenty of results to the relative amounts of enzymes readily available in malted grains
Potato. You will find there are several experiments of fOlks already using potatoes and how they prepared them
Enzymes - there are several commercial enzymes you can add to a potato slurry with or without heating



The Russians were making vodka hundreds of years before potatoes were brought to Europe. I suspect they mashed with malted grain for conversion. From what I understand, potatoes were used because they're were cheap and plentiful AND you can ferment rotten potatoes. You just have to distill it a bunch of times so it doesn't taste like rotten potatoes


Report back on what you find!!! And good luck

hey thanks for the tips lokibrew , I will definatly do more reading before I tackel the spud-mentation

What about making mashed potatoes and adding water and enzymes? The liquid would be much easier to extract after this point. Hell ill try it. I've got enough neutral for a year and I will have 2 fermenters available this week. One will now be for potato and the other for ujsmm.

let me know how that turns out hawkingrage............there's gotta be an easyier way to get them spuds into a bottle !!!